In 1667 satirist, essayist, and poet Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin, Ireland. In 1782 the United States and Britain signed preliminary peace articles in Paris, ending the Revolutionary War. In 1803 Spain completed the process of ceding Louisiana to France, which had sold it to the United States. In 1804 the Jeffersonian Republican-controlled US House served Federalist-partisan US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase with six articles of impeachment. (Two more articles were later added; Chase was later acquitted by the Jeffersonian Republican-controlled Senate. He is the only Supreme Court Justice in US history to be impeached.) In 1835 Samuel Langhorne Clemens -- better known as Mark Twain -- was born in Florida, MO. In 1874 author, statesman, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was born in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England. In 1900 Irish writer Oscar Wilde died in Paris at age 46. In 1939 Soviet troops invaded Finland. In 1962 U Thant of Burma was elected Secretary-General of the United Nations, succeeding the late Dag Hammarskjold. In 1966 the former British colony of Barbados became independent. In 1981 the US and the Soviet Union opened negotiations in Geneva aimed at reducing nuclear weapons in Europe. In 1988 buyout firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Co. took over RJR Nabisco Inc. with a bid of just over $24.5 billion. In 1999 anti-globalization protesters in Seattle, WA, forced the cancellation of opening ceremonies for the WTO meeting in that city.

In1777 San Jose, CA, was founded as el Pueblo de San Jose de Guadalupe. It was the first civilian settlement in Alta California. In 1781 the slave ship Zong dumped 133 sick slaves into the sea in order to claim insurance. British Courts disallowed the claim, but no one was charged with the slaves' murders. The incident is credited with starting off the abolition movement. In 1832 novelist Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, PA (now part of Philadelphia). In 1864 a Colorado militia killed at least 150 peaceful Cheyenne Indians in the Sand Creek Massacre. In 1890 the US Naval Academy defeated the US Military Academy 24-0 in the first Army-Navy football game, played in West Point, NY. In 1898 author C.S. Lewis was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. In 1924 Italian composer Giacomo Puccini died in Brussels before he could complete his opera "Turandot." (It was finished by Franco Alfano.) In 1929 Navy Lt. Cmdr. Richard E. Byrd radioed that he'd made the first airplane flight over the South Pole. In 1947 the UN General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the partitioning of Palestine between Arabs and Jews. In 1952 President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower kept his campaign promise to visit Korea to assess the ongoing conflict. In 1961 "Enos" the chimp was launched from Cape Canaveral aboard the Mercury-Atlas 5 spacecraft, which orbited earth twice before returning. In 1963 President Johnson named a commission headed by Earl Warren to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy. In 1964 the US Roman Catholic Church instituted sweeping changes in the liturgy, including the use of English instead of Latin. In 1967 US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara announced his resignation; he became president of the World Bank. In 1981 actress Natalie Wood drowned in a boating accident off Santa Catalina Island, CA, at age 43. In 1986 actor Cary Grant died in Davenport, IA, at age 82. In 1990 the United Nations Security Council passed UN Security Council Resolution 678, authorizing military intervention in Iraq if that nation did not withdraw its forces from Kuwait and free all foreign hostages by January 15, 1991. In 2001 former Beatle George Harrison died in Los Angeles following a battle with cancer; he was 58.

Wednesday, November 28. 2012

In 1520 Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan reached the Pacific Ocean after passing through the South American strait that now bears his name. In 1919 American-born Lady Astor was elected the first female member of the British Parliament. In 1925 the Grand Ole Opry, Nashville's famed home of country music, made its radio debut on station WSM. In 1942 nearly 500 people died in a fire that destroyed the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston. In 1943 President Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet leader Josef Stalin met in Tehran during World War II. In 1958 the African nation of Chad became an autonomous republic within the French community. In 1964 the United States launched the space probe Mariner IV on a course to Mars. In 1975 President Ford nominated Federal Judge John Paul Stevens to the U.S. Supreme Court seat vacated by William O. Douglas. In 1979 an Air New Zealand DC-10 en route to the South Pole crashed into a mountain in Antarctica, killing all 257 people aboard. In 1985 the Irish Senate approved the Anglo-Irish accord concerning Northern Ireland. In 1990 Margaret Thatcher formally resigned as prime minister of Britain during an audience with Queen Elizabeth II, who conferred the premiership on John Major.

Tuesday, November 27. 2012

In 1901 the US Army War College was established in Washington, DC. In 1910 New York City's Pennsylvania Station opened. In 1942 the French navy at Toulon scuttled its ships and submarines to keep them out of the hands of the Nazis. In 1945 Gen. George C. Marshall was named special US envoy to China to try to end hostilities between the Nationalists and the Communists. In 1953 playwright Eugene O'Neill died in Boston at age 65. In 1963 President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered his first address to a joint session of Congress. In 1970 Pope Paul VI, visiting the Philippines, was slightly wounded at the Manila airport by a dagger-wielding Bolivian painter disguised as a priest. In 1971 the Soviet Union's unmanned Mars 2 landed on the Red Planet. In 1973 the Senate voted 92-3 to confirm Gerald R. Ford as vice president, succeeding Spiro T. Agnew, who'd resigned. In 1978 San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk, a gay-rights activist, were shot to death inside City Hall by former supervisor Dan White. In 1983 183 people were killed when a Colombian Avianca Airlines Boeing 747 crashed near Madrid's Barajas airport. In 1985 the British House of Commons approved the Anglo-Irish accord, giving Dublin a consultative role in the governing of British-ruled Northern Ireland. In 1989 107 people were killed when a bomb blamed by police on drug traffickers destroyed a Colombian jetliner. In 1990 the British Conservative Party chose John Major to succeed Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. In 1992 for the second time in a year, military forces tried to overthow president Carlos Andres Perez in Venezuela. In 1999 the New Zealand Labour Party's Helen Clark became the first elected female Prime Minster in the country's history. In 2001 the Hubble Space Telescope detected a hydrogen atmosphere on the extrasolar planet Osiris, the first first time an atmosphere was detected on an extrasolar planet.

Monday, November 26. 2012

In 1825 the first college social fraternity, Kappa Alpha, was formed at Union College in Schenectady, NY. In 1832 public streetcar service began in New York City. The fare: 12 1/2 cents. In 1842 the University of Notre Dame was founded. In 1861 West Virginia was created (out of Virginia) over a dispute over slavery; West Virginia was against slavery. In 1922Peanuts cartoonist Charles M. Schulz was born in Minneapolis, MN. In 1940 the half million Jews of Warsaw, Poland, were forced by the Nazis to live within a walled ghetto. In 1941 a fleet of six Japanese aircraft carriers commanded by Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo left Hitokapu Bay bound for Pearl Harbor and the attack that would occur on December 7; later on this day, Secretary of State Hull presented the Japanese ambassador with the 'Hull note,' which had as one of its conditions a demand for the complete withdrawal of all Japanese troops from China; also on this day, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed a bill re-establishing the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day in the US (it had been the third Thursday since 1939, when FDR changed it from the fourth Thursday in order to help merchants during the Great Depression -- prior to 1939, Thanksgiving had been celebrated on the fourth Thursday of the month when President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day in 1863). In 1942 the motion picture Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, had its world premiere at the Hollywood Theater in New York. In 1943 the HMT Rohna, a British transport ship carrying American soldiers, became the first ship sunk by a guided missile when it was hit by a German missile off Algeria; 1,038 men were killed, including 1,015 American troops. In 1949 India adopted a constitution as a republic within the British Commonwealth. In 1950 China entered the Korean conflict, launching a counteroffensive against soldiers from the United Nations, the US, and South Korea. In 1965 France became the third country to enter space when it launched a Diamant-A rocket with its first satellite, Asterix-1 on board. In 1968 the British rock band Cream played their farewell concert at Royal Albert Hall. In 1973 President Nixon's personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, told a federal court that she'd accidentally caused part of the 18 1/2-minute gap in a key Watergate tape. In 1985 the space shuttle Atlantis was launched on its second mission, carrying seven astronauts on a seven-day mission. In 1998 Tony Blair became the first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to address the Republic of Ireland's parliament.

Sunday, November 25. 2012

In 1758 in the French and Indian War, the British captured Fort Duquesne, in present-day Pittsburgh. In 1783 the last British troops left New York City, three months after the signing of the Treaty of Paris. In 1881 Pope John XXIII was born Angelo Roncalli near Bergamo, Italy. In 1914 New York Yankee Hall of Famer Joe DiMaggio was born in Martinez, CA. In 1944 baseball commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis died at age 78. In 1957 President Eisenhower suffered a slight stroke. In 1963 the body of President Kennedy was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. In 1973 Greek President George Papadopoulos was ousted in a bloodless military coup. In 1974 former UN Secretary-General U Thant died in New York at age 65. In 1976The Band played their final concert, dubbed The Last Waltz, in San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom. In 1985 Ronald W. Pelton, a former employee of the National Security Agency, was arrested on espionage charges. (Pelton was later convicted of selling secrets to Soviet agents.) In 1999 5-year-old Elian Gonzalez was rescued by a pair of sport fishermen off Florida, setting off an international custody battle between relatives in Miami and Elian's father in Cuba. In 2002 President Bush signed legislation creating the Department of Homeland Security, and appointed former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge to be its head.

Saturday, November 24. 2012

In 1784 12th president of the United States Zachary Taylor was born in Orange County, VA. In 1859 British naturalist Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, which explained his theory of evolution. In 1868 ragtime composer Scott Joplin was born near Linden, TX. In 1871 the National Rifle Association was incorporated. In 1925 author, conservative journalist, and founder of National Review William F. Buckley, Jr. was born in New York City. In 1944 US bombers based on Saipan attacked Tokyo in the first raid against the Japanese capital by land-based planes. In 1963 Jack Ruby shot and mortally wounded Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President Kennedy, in a scene captured on live television. In 1969Apollo 12 splashed down safely in the Pacific. In 1971 hijacker "D.B. Cooper" parachuted from a Northwest Airlines 727 over Washington state with $200,000 in ransom -- his fate remains unknown. In 1976The Band gave its last public performance, documented by Martin Scorsese in the film The Last Waltz. In 1985 the hijacking of an Egyptair jetliner parked on the ground in Malta ended violently as Egyptian commandos stormed the plane. Fifty-eight people died in the raid, in addition to two others killed by the hijackers. In 1987 the US and the Soviet Union agreed to scrap shorter- and medium-range missiles. In 1989 Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu was unanimously re-elected Communist Party chief. (Within a month, he was overthrown in a popular uprising and executed along with his wife, Elena, on Christmas Day.) In 2004 Ukraine's election officials declared that Kremlin-backed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych had won Ukraine's bitterly disputed presidential runoff balloting; thousands of opposition supporters demonstrated in Kiev.

Friday, November 23. 2012

In 1765 Frederick County, MD, repudiated the British Stamp Act. In 1804 14th president of the US Franklin Pierce was born in Hillsboro, NH. In 1888 comedian Harpo Marx was born in New York City. In 1903 singer Enrico Caruso made his American debut at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, appearing in "Rigoletto." In 1936Life magazine was first published. In 1943 US forces seized control of Tarawa and Makin atolls from the Japanese. In 1945 most US wartime rationing of foods, including meat and butter, ended. In 1963 President Johnson proclaimed Nov. 25 a day of national mourning following the assassination of President Kennedy. In 1971 the People's Republic of China was seated in the UN Security Council. In 1979 Irish Republican Army member Thomas McMahon was sentenced to life in prison in Dublin, Ireland, for the assassination of Lord Mountbatten. In 1980 some 4,800 people were killed by a series of earthquakes that devastated southern Italy. In 1985 retired CIA analyst Larry Wu-tai Chin was arrested and accused of spying for China. (He committed suicide a year after his conviction.) In 1995 Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic grudgingly accepted the US-backed peace plan for the former Yugoslavia after meeting with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. In 2003 Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze resigned following weeks of mass protests over flawed elections. In 2004 opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko declared himself the winner of Ukraine's disputed presidential election and took a symbolic oath of office (he won a court-ordered revote in December 2004); also on this day, Dan Rather announced he would step down as principal anchorman of The CBS Evening News the next March.

Thursday, November 22. 2012

In 1718 English pirate Edward Teach -- better known as "Blackbeard" -- was killed during a battle off the Virginia coast. In 1899 jazz great Hoagy Carmichael was born in Bloomington, IN. In 1906 the "SOS" distress signal was adopted at the International Radio Telegraphic Convention in Berlin. In 1928 "Bolero" by Maurice Ravel made its debut in Paris. In 1935 a flying boat, the China Clipper, took off from Alameda, CA, carrying more than 100,000 pieces of mail on the first trans-Pacific airmail flight. In 1943 President Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek met in Cairo to discuss measures for defeating Japan; also on this day, lyricist Lorenz Hart died in New York at age 48. In 1963 President John F. Kennedy was shot to death while riding in a motorcade in Dallas; Texas Gov. John B. Connally, in the same limousine as Kennedy, was seriously wounded. Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson was inaugurated as the 36th U.S. President later that day. Suspect Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the assassination. In 1975 Juan Carlos was proclaimed King of Spain. In 1977 regular passenger service between New York and Europe on the supersonic Concorde began on a trial basis. In 1990 British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, having failed to win re-election of the Conservative Party leadership on the first ballot, announced her resignation. In 2004 tens of thousands of demonstrators jammed downtown Kiev, denouncing Ukraine's presidential runoff election as fraudulent and chanting the name of their reformist candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, who ended up winning a revote the following month.

In 1620 the Mayflower reached Provincetown, MA; the ship discharged the Pilgrims at Plymouth, MA, on December 26, 1620. In 1694 author and philosopher Francois-Marie Arouet, better known by his pen name of Voltaire, was born in Paris. In 1789 North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the US Constitution. In 1877 inventor Thomas A. Edison announced the invention of his phonograph. In 1920 Hall of Famer Stan Musial was born in Donora, PA. In 1942 the Alaska highway across Canada was formally opened. In 1964 New York's Verrazano Narrows Bridge, connecting Brooklyn and Staten Island, opened. In 1969 the Senate voted down the Supreme Court nomination of Clement F. Haynsworth, the first such rejection since 1930. In 1973 President Nixon's attorney, J. Fred Buzhardt, revealed the existence of an 18-and-a-half-minute gap in one of the White House tape recordings related to Watergate. In 1979 a mob attacked the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, killing two Americans. In 1980 an estimated 83 million TV viewers tuned in to the CBS primetime soap opera Dallas to find out "Who shot J.R.?" (The shooter turned out to be J.R. Ewing's sister-in-law, Kristin.) In 1985 former US Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard was arrested, accused of spying for Israel. (He later pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to life in prison.) In 1995 Balkan leaders meeting in Dayton, OH initialed a peace plan to end 3 1/2 years of ethnic fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina; the Dow Jones industrial average closed above the 5,000 mark for the first time. In 2002 NATO invited Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia to become members.